Day 1: More media than players

A member of the Broncos PR staff estimated there were 50 members of the media — representing print, television, radio and Internet outlets — present at the annual barbecue that kicks off training camp. (To be fair, lesson No. 57 in journalism school is “Never turn down a free meal”).

That’s more than double the number of players who took the field for the first practice at 3:00. There were 23 players in uniform — all but four of them were rookies. The four vets were quarterbacks Kyle Orton and Chris Simms, wide receiver Brandon Marshall (did you hear? he reported to camp!) and running back Ryan Torain. Linebackers D.J. Williams and Wesley Woodyard reported, but neither could participate in the conditioning test so they were put on the physically unable to perform list. Neither will be allowed to practice with the team until cleared by team doctors.

The team practiced for a little over an hour, breaking up into very small position groups and going over schemes and plays that had been installed during the spring minicamps.

“I don’t care they’ve been here a couple months after they’ve been drafted or a month and a half, they’re behind still in terms of understanding what it takes to be a professional football player, their playbook, their responsibilities; there’s just so many things theyre learning on a daily basis,” coach Josh McDaniels said. “You want to give them every extra day you can, every extra meeting time you can, and allow them to see the veteran players that are here and learn something from them.”

The rookies will have two more similar walk-thrus and a host of meetings before they are joined by their veteran teammates on Thursday. The full team will have a light practice on Thursday before the real fun starts Friday morning with the first practice in full pads.

McDaniels said the majority of the training camp practices will be in pads. The team rarely donned full pads during the Mike Shanahan era. So fans, when you show up here on Friday, expect to see some hitting.

“If that’s what you want your identity to be, that’s what we want our identity to be, then you’ve got to go out and do it,” McDaniels said. “It’s not just going to show up in September if you haven’t done it.”

Nicki Jhabvala is a Broncos beat writer for The Denver Post. She was previously the digital news editor for sports. Before arriving in Denver, she spent five years at Sports Illustrated working primarily as its online NBA editor. She also spent two years as a home page editor at the New York Times.